Rocky River Ruins, Adept (Patreon)

2Hi again! This map is the Rocky River Ruins (35x40), an unofficial Haunted map with everything but the title of Haunted (because then the name would be too long). This is building on the subtheme of having winding streams that's been seen through many of the Haunted maps, any of the branching streams heading off the screen here can easily be followed to one of the other maps. 

And, of course, your alternate version of this map is Unhaunted, definitely the most useful potential variant of these spooky maps. Perfect for incidental encounters after the evil in the forest is dispelled or maybe you could start with Unhaunted and switch to Haunted after a ritual is complete, a bbg is freed, or some astral even occurs.

1. Shrines, altars, and statues are all much more dramatic when located in the middle of a pool of water, you know? Not only that, but the water creates a minor obstacle for players to traverse, a potential hiding place for sneaky enemies, or a potentially dangerous hazard if you really want to make their lives difficult (via biting fish, acidic/poisonous water, animated water attempting to trip and drown adventurers).  So much more interesting than a cave, hill, furrow, or clearing. 

To help with movement over the water (in case it's dangerous for some reason), I wanted to add a few big ol' boulders for enemies/players to hop around on or get high ground from. Then, once I had those in the water, I figured I might as well add a few more nearby so that the existing ones didn't look out of place. I think they add on to the verticality in a fun way alongside the rock ledges!

2. As fun as the boulders are, they were a minor pain to draw. It's a bit tricky to draw big rocks from a birds-eye view in such a way that reads well. I decided not to worry about it too much and just go along with it, giving a few rocks the impression that they're jutting out over the rest of the terrain. Hopefully it reads well, I figured it would mostly be the job of the lighting/shading to get that idea across.

The altar is sorta inspired by Aztec imagery, something I've been paying some attention to recently due to the recent Magic: the Gathering set, Lost Caverns of Ixalan. Really cool art, I recommend browsing through just to see the neat dinosaur paintings and their funky take on goblins for this set. 

3. The works, nothing too spicy. The big boulders didn't look cool enough with the regular rocky beige so I changed them to be more pale, maybe giving the impression that these rocks came from somewhere else, aren't your average rocks, or were maybe the shattered pieces of something larger, a giant statue perhaps. 

That decision did make it a little tricky to color the bits of ruins/the shrine since I didn't want these details to blend in too much with the terrain. While it might be a strange decision which I'll regret later, I went with a mildly purple tint, which felt to me like a color which will stand out nicely here and not feel too terribly out of place while seeming believable. Is it? I won't know until I look back at this map in a few days, maybe I'll hate it. Looks great in the unhaunted version, though!